As China battles an economic downturn that could erode Communist Party control, its leaders are embracing events of 30 years ago to reaffirm reformist policies that took the nation from Mao jackets to business suits.
Beijing this month celebrates the 30th anniversary since the start of "reform and opening up" in 1978 with a torrent of speeches, conferences and propaganda spectacles.
The message is plain.
"Today, only if we promote reform and opening up can we solve the problems that emerge as we advance," the official People's Daily said yesterday.
The celebrations focus on a famed Party leadership meeting when, according to the propaganda, pragmatic Deng Xiaoping wrested control from Maoist die-hards and set the country on a bold course of market reforms that has extended up to now.
"At a time when there has been debate about whether China has been right in choosing reform, and whether reform should continue, the central leaders want to stress their commitment," said Han Gang, a historian at East China Normal University in Shanghai who specialises in the period.
Yet the history being celebrated comes swaddled in myths fostered by a Party that packages its past as a succession of wise leaders. Scholars sifting through interviews, memoirs and documents describe a much more complicated course that defies clear divisions and neat endings.
As the current Communist Party chief, Hu Jintao, vows a new tide of reforms to counter China's current woes, chipping away at the historical myths matters, said Wu Si, editor of China Through the Ages (Yan huang chun qiu), a Beijing magazine.
"If you present the past as the perfect, simple summation of what China needs now, then you don't need new medicine," said Mr Wu, whose magazine publishes memoirs challenging many Party taboos.
"But if you see it in a different light, then you can see the need for a fresh prescription."
In the same way that some nations celebrate epic battles, China's bureaucrat-rulers celebrate their epic meetings as milestones of national progress.
Official accounts describe how revolutionary veterans who had suffered under Mao's capricious power pushed aside the meeting agenda to press their demands that loyal but persecuted officials be rehabilitated. Mao's milder successor, Hua Guofeng, fixated on guarding the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, was taken off guard by this eruption of demands, these accounts say.
Chronology - China milestones since 1978
China's economic reforms have transformed the country from an isolated backwater to the world's fourth-largest economy.
Here are some landmark dates:
• 1978: Chinese Communist Party launches reforms backed by the recently rehabilitated veteran leader Deng Xiaoping, two years after the death of communist leader Mao Zedong. China starts the "household-responsibility system" in the countryside, giving some farmers ownership of their product for the first time.
• 1979: Most urban families ordered to limit family size to one child to stem population growth. Diplomatic relations with the US normalised.
• 1980: Southern city Shenzhen is made the first "special economic zone" to experiment with more flexible market policies and in a matter of years it is transformed from a fishing village into a manufacturing and shipping powerhouse.
• 1986: Student-led protests against corruption and political control spread in Beijing and other cities. The unrest leads to the dismissal in 1987 of Hu Yaobang, the reformist Communist Party chief seen as too liberal by Deng and Party elders.
• 1988: Economic turbulence stirs public discontent. Bank runs and panic buying are triggered by rising inflation that peaks at over 30 per cent in cities.
• 1989: Anti-government protests spread as other Communist states topple. The Communist Party sends troops to crush mass student-led protests on the nights of June 3 and 4, killing hundreds around Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Sweeping campaign against dissent launched.
• 1990: The Shanghai Stock Exchange, the first ever stock market in Communist China, opens.
• 1992: Deng tours southern China to press for faster economic reforms and quell the influence of Party conservatives opposed to market liberalisation. This sparks a fresh wave of market growth and some political relaxation.
• 1996: China allows the yuan to be convertible on the current account, enabling the free flow of money for imports and exports.
• 1997: Deng dies in February. His successor is Jiang Zemin. Former British colony Hong Kong returns to Chinese rule in July.
• 1998: China kicks off a €390 billion bailout of its banking sector, rescuing them from a legacy of bad, often politically directed, loans made in the early years of reform.
• 1999: In May, Chinese protesters surround and stone the US embassy in Beijing and attack US consulate offices elsewhere in the country after Nato forces bombed China's embassy in Belgrade during the war against Serbia.
• 2001: China joins the World Trade Organisation in November.
• 2002: The Communist Party of China permits entrepreneurs to become members.
• 2003: National People's Congress endorses Hu Jintao to succeed Jiang as President. Sars breaks out around the country in spring and summer. China's first manned space flight blasts off from Gobi desert in October.
• 2005: China sweeps past Britain, France and Italy to become the world's fourth-largest economy. China frees the yuan from a dollar peg, letting it float within a tightly managed band.
• 2006: Two great but controversial projects, the Three Gorges Dam and a railway to Tibet, are completed. China's foreign currency reserves, already the world's biggest, top €780 billion.
• 2008: Beijing hosts hugely successful Summer Olympic Games, illustrating China's arrival on the world stage.